Saturday's shopping list

Every saturday a bunch of us make a shopping list... we gather a few items from different sellers and show them in our blogs... a bit like sharing our screen/window shopping.
I was ready to do one today but for some reason I've been having some problems with Etsy lately. The pics just don't load. Sometimes I refresh a million times and then it does, but other times, like today...nothing. It is with the only site that I have trouble...weird. i'm trying to solve the problem, but in the meantime do visit Charlotte's blog for the list for all the shopping lists!!

Have a nice weekend!

Merry go Round

Jump on our merry go round and join a group of artists/crafts-women as they link hands around the world and tell you a little about their lives in art a

We are group of 8 women from all over the world, we have got together in what would constitute an example of peaceful idea exchange and diplomacy, and agreed to come to our blogs once a month and share a bit more about ourselves.
We choose a question and all of us have to answer it in our blogs. It will be very interesting to read what each of us has to say, taking in account how much our lives and crafts differ.

This months question:
How do the different seasons affect your arts and crafts?

Well, the thing is that the change of seasons was never so present in my life, or ever affected my daily life as much as it does now that I live in The Netherlands. In my "previous life" in Argentina, seasons came and go (we do have 4 different seasons, same as here) but either because I was too young and busy with...eerrr... being a teenager? or I don't know why, I really didn't pay much attention to it. Maybe as you get older you become more conscious of how fast time goes by? Don't know. The thing is, even though winters in the south of Argentina (the southern you go, the closer to the southern Pole...brrrr coldest place in the world) can be very cold, freezing temps and all...it's sunny. Most of the time it is sunny. What affects me here is the lack of sun, light (no kidding, I have to take vitamin D supplements!!! never in my life before!).

Autumn I enjoy thoroughly because I love the colors and tastes it brings. And I guess that inspires me a lot. It is also the season where I can work with wool without really feeling like I'm a looney... in summer, it just seems weird to be carrying loads of wool around the house!Too warm! So, autumn is quite an inspirational time of the year, followed by winter which is dark and sad in my opinnion...and also cold, so it forces me to be indoors and that means work work work... I'm a very outdoorsy type of person. I love hiking and taking long walks in the woods... so in spring and summer you will seldom see me inside whilst the sun is shinning outside. I feel like I'm wasting my time if I am sitting inside and outside everything is full of color and light.

The seasons therefore do affect my art and influece also my choice of materials. I tend to do more paper and pencil, ceramics work in spring and summer, and more wool, felt, sewing work in autumn and winter whilst indoors. I suppose because of the context surrounding me, in summer colors are more bright and in winter one tends to work more with browns and greys, black... Nature is indeed inspirational consciously or uncosciously...it still runs our lives!



Do please read more from the rest of the girls who take part in this merry go round!


Anna, Half and Acre
Andreanna, Glamasaurus
Charlotte, Fancypicnic
Agathe, Le bar du vent
Fabianna, Easterya
Lily, lilypangartanddesign
Ruth, Birdland creations
Sara, Crafts of Texture

Tuesday?

Yesterday someone asked me if I had had a good time on friday ...and I swear, it took me a good 5 minutes to remember what I had done on friday, whay was I supposed to have a good time?? what? Friday seemed like a million days away... I think it is a consequence of motherhood this feeling of time passing by faster. Or at least for me, never felt like I didn't have enough hours in a day until I become a mother. Juggling so many balls in the air keeps you busy!
Monday... don't know where it went.

Anyway, thanks everyone for your congrats and feedback on the new site. We are now correcting some errors in all 3 languages and adding slowly more and more things to the shop. It is a very labourious task. In the meantime I do keep working on some stuff... right now, a few corsages mixing organza and hand made felt... and a few beads:
Passionate Red corsage


Working on the names for the rest...



And a red rose...



The first one in the shop now... the rest coming later today...

New Website

And to finish this week, something new...and hopefully entertaining.
Long hours we've spent designing and programming a new Website. The old one that we had we really didn't like but we wanted to have something up and running. It still got a healthy amount of views per day, so it fulfilled its purpose.
Mr Husband has devoted hours and html knowledge in coming up with something, hopefully, decent. I like it (but then again I don't ask for much when it comes to a website...). Website

We have included, besides the links to my DaWanda and Etsy shops, our own Flocita e-shop for all those buyers whom contacted me asking how they could purchase things without having to create an account in said e-commerce sites. Well, here it is now. I still have to list a whole lot of stuff, but hey... we launched it yesterday!

The site is in three languages: spanish, english and dutch. We tried to minimize as much as possible the amount of spelling and grammar mistakes, but you know how it is...after days of staring at the same thing for hours, one sort of stops seeing mistakes. So if you see something...please let me know.

OK...so... feedback is what I ask. I know it works on my computer, with my server and connection speed... yours? is it easy to navigate?? fun??...pretty??? :)
Please let me know...

Thanks and... and let's see who catches the little bird...


www.florcita.eu

Black magic Necklace

Trying new things here. I sat down with silver wire and a plier anmade all sorts of connector for this new necklace -in black grey and transparent. I added a hanmade (by moi) polymer clay bead... and some other stuff.


..in my shop now.

On my desk wednesday!

This is on my desk.... wool... just merino... I need to find out what I have and what I don't have. I havea lot of rough non-merino wool... but that is not what I need now.

Tuesday

Two more necklaces, lila dew and grey sparkles now in the shop!



I'm working against the clock tryint to get some stuff ready before the week is over... will be bacl soon :)

Monday- Look what I got III

I haven't had time to post these ones before. A few weeks ago I went to Claudia Wendt's shop in Dawanda. I love her beads and lately Im having some sort of lampwork bead fetish and I like them all and I want them all and I want to make things with them... ideas bubbling in my head all the time.
They got here super fast and not just the ones I bought but also a few extra ones!



Silvered ivory. I dont know if you can really see (click on the pic for larger view) but there are all sorts of swirls and greys and silver there on each neat dot. I have some work lined up before I can do something with them, but I can not wait!!!!

This was another purchase like the previous 3 "look what I got" that I made whilst supposedly shopping for christmas presents. Im closer to a bigger stash of beads than being done with holiday shopping (as a matter of fact I still have 5 people to shop for!).

Have a nice monday!

Shopping List Saturday!

Gray, grey.... what is it? grey or gray?? In the past few days I've had a complete mental freeze up about this word. Im sure I learnt in my english 101 class, a million years ago, that the proper spelling was gray...or grey? hahah can' t remember and it seems to get used indistinctively.

Anyway, gre/ay is all around us. Autumn seems to have finished and now it is the daily grayness of winter. Gray seems to be a very fashionable color right now as well. My friend Reya loves it. It's a great complement color I think, neutral...even chic. I love how red and gray look together...
In honor of this grayness, my shopping list this saturday has 4 gorgeous gray items I would looove to have!


(please, click on the image for a larger view)


Clockwise from top left:

-Silvered white and frosty clear nugget trio, handmade etched lampwork beads from Auroracreations. Absolutely love these beads. I just recently discovered her shop and I love her flat beads... me wants!!!
-Victoria...grey blue earrings from Ambersky. All of her victorian style earrings are just gorgeous. I have marked a couple as favorites and I think santa will bring me at least one...please... :)
-Fall collection- Belle tote with Italy flannel wool in light grey from christystudio. This tote looks so nice and warm! The prime example of grey being a complementing color...imagine this bag with a black outfit..or a touch of red (obviously!). Beautiful!
-Black and gray mug from Jennyblasenpottery. I have all sorts of handmade cups and mugs I've bought in different trips. I just love mugs... and ceramic ones are my favorites. This one is just simple but so pretty. Imagine a nice cup of tea steaming there..waiting for you in this grey winter...


Please do visit the shops. Lots more goodies there.
Hope you have a nice weekend! I'm off to visit friends.

Friday, ceramic buttons

And here are the buttons... I made different shapes: stars, little flowers, square and hearts. These are fun to make, only problem is that since I don't have my own ceramic oven (or kiln) the times depend on the amount of pieces to be fired at the atellier... so, sometimes it takes a while.

The thing with glazing is that it never turns out the same way twice. It has to do with the chemical circumstances inside the oven. Naturally if you put red, you will get red, but the swirls will differ. If you have glazing with minerals or stones in it, you wont get the same thing every time. It adds to its uniqueness if you ask me.
The red glazing is supposed to be like that, edges here and there a bit white.




I love the blue one. I can see it with some creammy shall for instace.





The earthy tones have so many different swirls and spot...lovely. What do you think?




(clicky to make the pic larger)

I'm not sure yet how I will put them in the shop...individually, pairs... there is a limited stock...at least until I make some more (which could take a while ...errr... reasons up there).

Friday again... and a weekend packed full again...

On my desk wednesday!

More "on my hand, wednesday", just an image:




And listed late yesterday in my shop (see there on the right hand bar): "caramel and dancing stars"

tuesday

I wanted to get this post out earlier but noooo in the morning I had to go with Mr Husband, at his request, to chose his new bike. He bikes everyday to work, around 40km a day. He loves it. There is no obligation, the car is parked outside, I barely use it. But he is trying to avoid traffic jams ( a very ussual thing in NL) and be healthy and green. Good for him... I 'll drink some tea and have some cake in his honor :)
So, the bike has to be... well, a good one. Durable. Resistant. 40km a day is quite a lot. Frankly, I wasn't expecting bikes to be so expensive. Serious... I don't know what was I expecting because...well... I don't ussually search for bikes, but 1500euros...the cheapest one... am I the only one who finds that a bit absurd?? a pair of good (but not the best) biking pants, 70euros... WHAT??? Sometimes I feel either cheap, or too disconnected from the (bike) world out there. Incredible.

I need to sell some stuff to pay for this bike... a kidney maybe? hahaha... no, here is my latest addition to the shop:



I used five silver wires onto which I added hand felted gray beads, seed beads and 4 handmade glass beads in orange, ivory and with details in actual silver!
It's a short necklace. I like it myself a whole lot. I didnt know orange looked so good with gray...orange is not my first choice color (which one is it?? yes, red...)... but the silver from the beads and the gray wool really look good together.


In the shop now!


I know I promised some ceramic buttons but the external hard disk, where all the pics go first... has dissapeard. I will have to go check in the little one's toys' chest... things seem to end up there... like a Bermuda triangle, all things within a certain radious of the chest, vanishes.

Monday

Here we go again, Monday.
Firstly, I would like to apologise for not joining the rest of the "shopping list saturday" people this last saturday. I had quite a hectic weekend with wedding anniversary, 3 birthday parties, dinners and a sick kid (after all that candy!). I will rejoin next week.

Hey! thanks to all the messages left by other sellers in dawanda I found out a pinboard I submitted (theme: RED! obviously) has been rotating on the front page... I managed to get a glimpse today before it changed again:


I don't know if you can read (click on the pic) but it says FLORCITA there :) Good for all the people with red items I had picked before. I never thought my pinboard would get chosen. But now I will submit one once a week and hey, include a friend or two ;) who knows...

And, the girls from LasLopez chose one of my products for a treasury:

see there! one of my flower brooches... if it could only make it to the front page!!! *crossing fingers*

For tomorrow I have: new necklaces, ceramic buttons (squares, stars and hearts! in different colors...) and... some more.

Lastly, I would humbly and publicly like to apologise for any spelling mistakes that this blog might have. I hope they don't become the most important part of what I write and that the idea, at least, is understandable.
English is not my mother language. Spanish is. And I live in the Netherlands, which means that on a daily basis I speak/write/listen to dutch and dialects closer to german than anything else. My head switches constantly from spanish/dutch/dialect/english and back again... all day long. I am bound to make mistakes... spelling or grammatical. So I apologise, but I hope the deeper content of the blog, not semantics and syntaxis, is more important and understood.

Thanks and have a nice monday!

Tulips

What else could come from Holland other than tulips??? Well, actually...lots of things...cheese!...as a matter of fact, I've been living here for 6 years and I haven't seen one tulip field! hahaha maybe because I live in the south and here there are asparagus fields (YUM!) but no tulips... only the ones I have in my garden and every year the mice/moles/neighbours?? steal.

So, I made my own tulips. Warm, woolly tulips.
A new version of the "Sketched flowers" scarf in purples and lilas that I made a while ago (and now is on its way to a very smart girl studying at Princeton),

This new one is just black and white with a few silky strands. It is much longer and in a way sober. There are no beads in this one because I thought that a simple black and white scarf is good for night and day... so here:




Today was a lovely day here. Sunny and very autumny... lovely. I got a chance to use my new creamy/silky scarf. I found my loom (which I brought all the way from Argentina), so I've been busy trying to remember how was it that it works... I love weaving... love the texture...but it takes soooo much time. Measuring and cutting each thread, putting it in the loom...one by one... and there are ussually more than 70! Tieing them up, rolling them up and if it all went well... then you start weaving... it takes a whole day for a long scarf.... or maybe I just need to get used to it again. But it explains why ussually they are so expensive.

This was going to be my On my desk wednesday pic, although I spent wednesday preparing a huge order of cards (more on that later!):




That is beautiful creamy yarn (brought from Argentina as well... 100% wool!) and just strands of silk I ussually use for wet felting, this time I weaved them...

Well, tomorrow is friday... and my 6th wedding anniversary... *I hope we get to go out!!! PLEASE!*
So, we'll see you in the weekend!

Look what I got II

I've been following Lily's art for a while now. As a matter of fact, I think her shop was one of the first ones I saw on DaWanda . I like her use of colors and superimposed shapes and effects on her digital art, and I really really like how she works her watercolors... beautiful!





She is branching out now and along side prints and original art, she offers things like laptop skins in different sizes. When I saw those I also saw my chance and jumped to it. So I got myself a skin to protect our new laptop. You know when you have something new and you want it to last long all shiny and pretty... will not happen, I know, not with a 2yr old climbing on the chair and smashing the keyboard with sticky hands... but I will try to keep it looking good (for a few more weeks), so I got us an owl skint:


in the back there, a bit of my husband...


We are all really enjoying it and now of course my kid needs to sit and talk to the "Juju" (pronouce huhu... comes voegel: bird in dutch) and touch it, scratch it....abuse it basically! hahaha

Thanks Lily! I love your work! keep it up!

Hope you all like it too...

(this was going to be yet another christmas present but... just didnt make it until december in its box...)

Shopping List Saturday!

I've been doing a lot of window shopping lately. Yesterday especially. I've been given full liberty to buy all the christmas shopping. Meaning, me...laptop...credit card in hand... and DaWanda and Etsy. Oh, and a cup of tea. :)
I've already started although, at the end of the shopping session, I had several purchases and all for me... hahah none for Christmas... this will be dangerous (for our financial situation!).

I contacted a few sellers yesterday and Im glad 85% of the people one gets in touch with, are always willing to respond your questions and go the extra mile for you. Naturally, people want to sell...you will say. Sure, but I've come accross people whom weren't as helpful and nice... Im just asking what the shipping costs will be not for you to come over here and deliver it! :)

Well, in this grey wintery day... here is a sample of a few of the things I found and reeeeeally like... hope it inspires you as well!



Clockwise:

-Pom Pom mittens from Moocowhandknits
-Golden Tears original Photograph by Simplycutedesigns
-Mustard Seed handspun yarn by the very sweet and helpful knittydirtygirl
-Sheer silken luxury, felted wrap by the marvellous Inger at Felt by Ingermaaike

Beautiful things!
Have you decided where will you be shopping this years christmas presents?



Oh, by the way! to see more Shopping lists, or join the fun, do check Charlotte's blog from fancypicninc.
(I always forget that last part...sorry! )

Have a nice weekend!